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Denuvo update blocks hypervisor bypass used to crack PC games

Denuvo update blocks hypervisor bypass used to crack PC games

Denuvo appears to have been updated and the hypervisor bypass that has been used to crack dozens of games no longer works if recent reports are to be believed.

The reports state that Star Wars: Galactic Racer remains uncracked several days after launch, suggesting the game ships with the latest edition of the DRM software built to close the loophole that previously cracked Denuvo-secured games wide-open.

Once again, this appears to be causing issues for legitimate players as Steam reviews are reporting issues with the game from crashing outright on startup to other hiccups once in game.

The ongoing lawsuit against hacker voices38 - the anonymous individual involved in the Denuvo cracking situation continues, with Denuvo having filed subpoenas against Discord, Reddit, Valve, and Microsoft to try and unmask and help identify them across the platforms.

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Lop1 said:
I don't recall him ever doing an actual removal of the thing. Every crack more or less is making the DRM think it's talking to a server and not much else on that front.

Actual removal of the thing requires enormous amount of time and effort. Atm I know only of single instance of it happening, and that is for Assassin's Creed Origins, by SKIDROW.
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Thats exactly what he did.Empress also.
 
lordofcombo said:
Thats exactly what he did.Empress also.
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When did either of them outright disentangle the game binary from Denuvo and other DRMs? For what releases to be specific? Especially Empress. To my knowledge, she has NEVER done this, unless she was involved in AC: Origins Denuvo removal with Skidrow.

I am not saying you are wrong outright, but I have never seen any other cases of Denuvo removal outside AC Origins and from a quick google search, very recent Asassin's Creed Mirage removal by RUNE, who completely removed Denuvo and VMProtect.

If you have any examples, would love to hear it. It's quite easy to check whether that is the case, merely by looking at binary size. Most games, that have clean binaries, are sub 100 MB large, while those infested with this sort of cancer, in particular Denuvo, can encroach up to even 1 GB these days. You can see this whenever you compare initial game binaries to those after publishers publish an update removing them. From something like 500mb to 50mb for example.
 
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Skelletonike said:
You can pirate whatever you want, but it will never be morally correct.
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Exactly. 🏴‍☠️Just embrace your inner pirate🏴‍☠️ and never, ever apologize for it nor try to justify it by claiming the people you are stealing from are "greedy" or the equally idiotic "if buying isn't owning piracy isn't stealing."

I'm smart enough to never, ever use HV exploits and instead rely on people like Rune and Voices38, who proved just yesterday that authorities are no closer to figuring out who he is than they were a month ago by posting three more Denuvo hacks.

Voices38 for the win!
 
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The Real Jdbye said:
The method isn't possible to patch permanently. The hypervisor can be updated, and then hopefully will work with all the new games coming out.
There are 2 things they can do to block the hypervisor. Patch the hwid checks so that the hypervisor doesn't pass them anymore, or detect the hypervisor itself. Dunno which route they took but patching the hwid checks is easier to do, but also easier to work around, so if they did that, it might not take long to bypass.

Screw hypervisors though. I don't want a rootkit on my PC (2 rootkits even, since Denuvo is one too)
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Technically they could just make denuvo like vanguard and start really early in the boot chain to bug check and detect hypervisors and VMs were probably gonna see another back and forth war with this shit unti l idk maybe MS steps in makes some changes to windows as a whole.
 
ChibiMofo said:
Exactly. 🏴‍☠️Just embrace your inner pirate🏴‍☠️ and never, ever apologize for it nor try to justify it by claiming the people you are stealing from are "greedy" or the equally idiotic "if buying isn't owning piracy isn't stealing."

I'm smart enough to never, ever use HV exploits and instead rely on people like Rune and Voices38, who proved just yesterday that authorities are no closer to figuring out who he is than they were a month ago by posting three more Denuvo hacks.

Voices38 for the win!
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I mean, it's not stealing. Theft would mean you deprive original owner of whatever item was 'stolen'. Piracy is evidently not that. It's making a copy without permission of license holder, which is why it's 'copyright infringement' and not theft. The original owner still owns the thing. It's not so much as 'justification' as much as dismantling the corporate propaganda that 'piracy is theft', to make it look worse than it actually, when it's not. It's why DMCA even exists.

Same way Sony is atm trying to make the court believe that 'no reasonable consumer believes they own their games', when there are countless instances where they use the word 'own' and not something like 'rent' and such.

Besides that, corpos are no stranger to grabbing pirated copies and selling those, due to being unable to deal with cancer of a DRM they put in, or straight up lost binaries and source code.

Again, I am not giving any moral justification here, personally couldn't care any less whether someone pays or not, but saying that digital piracy is theft is just not true, regardless of whether "buying is owning" or not, especially not when corpos engage with it themselves. AI training is being largely done using copyrighted material, without any consent of the owners too, so any talk of morality on the topic is superfluous anyway.
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Renos44 said:
Technically they could just make denuvo like vanguard and start really early in the boot chain to bug check and detect hypervisors and VMs were probably gonna see another back and forth war with this shit unti l idk maybe MS steps in makes some changes to windows as a whole.
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That would require external software to be installed and I imagine it will cause issues with rootkits software like Vanguard and such. People may be convinced with Anti Cheats, that provides at least SOMETHING to the end user, DRMs having that kind of access, with all of potential issues at ZERO benefit to the paying customer........Will be a hard sell. It would also potentially force every single one of those games to require online connection for every boot, which WILL not be popular at all.

Irdeto is already hated to hell and back, I don't see them having any success in even attempting it. Quite the contrary, it would make them hated by even the most uninformed people.
 
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Renos44 said:
Technically they could just make denuvo like vanguard and start really early in the boot chain to bug check and detect hypervisors and VMs were probably gonna see another back and forth war with this shit unti l idk maybe MS steps in makes some changes to windows as a whole.
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Time to throw another coin in the "Andrew Tannenbaum was right again" jar if this happens, because it is guaranteed it will be used as a backdoor. A highly obfuscated, complex, and proprietary networked program living inside the kernel... what could go wrong?

I believe a large part of why Denuvo is allowed to exist is due to the majority of customers who simply never notice it is there. This would not hold up for long when you start requiring early kernel modules.

It's all completely superfluous bullshit anyway. It never ever stops hackers. Microsoft "making some changes to Windows" can't solve this because the whole idea of "trusted computing" is stupid from the get-go, and requires you to no longer own your own hardware to be effective. Look no further than Widevine Level 1 - which ALSO doesn't do fuck all, but that's the direction we are going.

I'm convinced anticheat and DRM companies are just scam artists that know their products are rubbish, but developers buy from them anyway because they are told that an amicable relationship with their customers can't be trusted. If you go to the Denuvo website it is FILLED with defensive marketing reminiscent of a dictator spinning the news in his favor. DRM vendors always play dirty and deceitful when they lose, because pretending they always win is how they stay in business.

EDIT: I cannot find the page anymore, but Denuvo used to have a whole blog article making up excuses for why their software definitely doesn't suck.
 
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Lop1 said:
I mean, it's not stealing. Theft would mean you deprive original owner of whatever item was 'stolen'. Piracy is evidently not that. It's making a copy without permission of license holder, which is why it's 'copyright infringement' and not theft. The original owner still owns the thing. It's not so much as 'justification' as much as dismantling the corporate propaganda that 'piracy is theft', to make it look worse than it actually, when it's not. It's why DMCA even exists.

Same way Sony is atm trying to make the court believe that 'no reasonable consumer believes they own their games', when there are countless instances where they use the word 'own' and not something like 'rent' and such.

Besides that, corpos are no stranger to grabbing pirated copies and selling those, due to being unable to deal with cancer of a DRM they put in, or straight up lost binaries and source code.

Again, I am not giving any moral justification here, personally couldn't care any less whether someone pays or not, but saying that digital piracy is theft is just not true, regardless of whether "buying is owning" or not, especially not when corpos engage with it themselves. AI training is being largely done using copyrighted material, without any consent of the owners too, so any talk of morality on the topic is superfluous anyway.
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That would require external software to be installed and I imagine it will cause issues with rootkits software like Vanguard and such. People may be convinced with Anti Cheats, that provides at least SOMETHING to the end user, DRMs having that kind of access, with all of potential issues at ZERO benefit to the paying customer........Will be a hard sell.

Irdeto is already hated to hell and back, I don't see them having any success in even attempting it. Quite the contrary, it would make them hated by even the most uninformed people.
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It could be strictly based on different country laws on why you're not understanding that anything that involves a value of currency can be considered theft digital or not. Copyright infringement protects assets from other businesses making profit from their materials. If anything is protected from a license thats just like showing a receipt that you did purchase it and unlocking it's full use abilities.

It's no different from a independent artist having the right to take you to court over you pirating their $20 album without paying for it. They have that right because you didn't pay for it and they can file for protection rights to help with that.
 
The hero Voices38 got Denuvo by the balls.
He knew where the weak spot was and had the Denuvo eggs firmly in his grip.

Why did he go to all that trouble...
He wanted to show that all rotten eggs are within reach... good man.

As consumers, we’re forced to buy rotten eggs without our consent, and our gaming experience is noticeably throttled.
I want to buy games without Denuvo eggs, and Voice can make that happen. Thank you, Voice.
 
K3Nv4 said:
It could be strictly based on different country laws on why you're not understanding that anything that involves a value of currency can be considered theft digital or not. Copyright infringement protects assets from other businesses making profit from their materials. If anything is protected from a license thats just like showing a receipt that you did purchase it and unlocking it's full use abilities.

It's no different from a independent artist having the right to take you to court over you pirating their $20 album without paying for it. They have that right because you didn't pay for it and they can file for protection rights to help with that.
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Considering what the definition of the word 'theft' is, piracy can never be that.

"Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it."

Unless you deprive the original owner of the assets, it's not theft. No matter what legal chicanery lobbyists try to use, it really won't be that. This pedantry on my side just stems from the constant and annoying propaganda from corporations who are pretending they are the 'victims', when they engage in it themself.

But yea, what you say about copyright infringement itself, stands fully.
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tomberyx said:
The hero Voices38 got Denuvo by the balls.
He knew where the weak spot was and had the Denuvo eggs firmly in his grip.

Why did he go to all that trouble...
He wanted to show that all rotten eggs are within reach... good man.

As consumers, we’re forced to buy rotten eggs without our consent, and our gaming experience is noticeably throttled.
I want to buy games without Denuvo eggs, and Voice can make that happen. Thank you, Voice.
Click to expand...

You are not really forced to buy games with Denuvo. Only way to make companies who utilize it stop, is by never paying for any game that has it. If enough people do that, everyone would stop using it. Simple as that.
 
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Lop1 said:
Considering what the definition of the word 'theft' is, piracy can never be that.

"Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it."

Unless you deprive the original owner of the assets, it's not theft. No matter what legal chicanery lobbyists try to use, it really won't be that. This pedantry on my side just stems from the constant and annoying propaganda from corporations who are pretending they are the 'victims', when they engage in it themself.

But yea, what you say about copyright infringement itself, stands fully.
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You are not really forced to buy games with Denuvo. Only way to make companies who utilize it stop, is by never paying for any game that has it. If enough people do that, everyone would stop using it. Simple as that.
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"without that person's permission"

Unless corperation makes the game free they will never give you permission to just pirate it.
 
K3Nv4 said:
"without that person's permission"

Unless corperation makes the game free they will never give you permission to just pirate it.
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"to deprive the rightful owner of it."

That part is where I take issue with. Nobody would question the permission part. That part is blatantly obvious and only a fool would even contest that piracy does not ignore it.
 
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Lop1 said:
"to deprive the rightful owner of it."

That part is where I take issue with. Nobody would question the permission part. That part is blatantly obvious and only a fool would even contest that piracy does not ignore it.
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The rightful owner would be the ones who made it which would be employees under that corperation knowing that they applied for that job to accept pay for that material they are giving the corporate.
 
K3Nv4 said:
The rightful owner would be the ones who made it which would be employees under that corperation knowing that they applied for that job to accept pay for that material they are giving the corporate.
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I wasn't questioning that either. Piracy does not deprive the rightful owner of the assets, hence it is not theft. That is the whole point.
 
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K3Nv4 said:
The company never gave permission to be hosted under torrents just the ecosystems they approve of.
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Again.....in order to be theft, you have to deprive the original owner of the assets. Piracy does not do that. DMCA and other laws about it is what made copyright infringement that piracy constitutes into something illegal.

Again, nobody questioned the issue about permission, nor that piracy is legal. Whole point is that piracy is not theft, because original owner is not deprived of their assets, because piracy constitutes making copies without permission. Copies.

I am stating just one thing here, that piracy is not theft. What you describe here, does not make it theft. Whether publisher approves of it or not, does not make it theft. It is still illegal, but it is not theft.
 
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K3Nv4 said:
The rightful owner would be the ones who made it which would be employees under that corperation knowing that they applied for that job to accept pay for that material they are giving the corporate.
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"Rightful owner"... Uh-huh.

This mindset is why people who pay for games legally are constantly screwed over while people who copy them actually get the goods they would've otherwise paid for.

This "I own it and nobody else can have it" direction is self-destructive and helps nobody. If you want customers that stick by you, you acknowledge that copying is not a threat if you provide something people WANT to pay for. Stop seeing commercial art as property, and start seeing it as a symbiotic relationship. That is not difficult to do.

Trying to apply "theft" or even the word "piracy" to art is antagonistic anti-consumer language normalized by people who stand to benefit from your belief in it.

I'll save the Free Software rabbithole for another time, this approach applies to proprietary work too. What we are talking about is beyond just monopoly over your own creative work (which 99% of the time is just abused by publishers to snuff out fair competition anyway), but literally denying your customers your end of the agreement.
 
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bonkmaykr said:
"Rightful owner"... Uh-huh.

This mindset is why people who pay for games legally are constantly screwed over while people who copy them actually get the goods they would've otherwise paid for.

This "I own it and nobody else can have it" direction is self-destructive and helps nobody. If you want customers that stick by you, you acknowledge that copying is not a threat if you provide something people WANT to pay for. Stop seeing commercial art as property, and start seeing it as a symbiotic relationship. That is not difficult to do.

What we are talking about is beyond just monopoly over your own creative work (which 99% of the time is just abused by publishers to snuff out fair competition anyway), but literally denying your customers your end of the agreement.
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I'm not against piracy here just stating common sense lol. Most corperations do put money they make into better content for future games so they can buy more assets and higher more devs. That's how the world has always worked and prospered. You can't just have a home for free without rightful papers stating you purchased it.
 
bonkmaykr said:
This mindset is why people who pay for games legally are constantly screwed over while people who copy them actually get the goods they would've otherwise paid for.

This "I own it and nobody else can have it" direction is self-destructive and helps nobody. If you want customers that stick by you, you acknowledge that copying is not a threat if you provide something people WANT to pay for. That is not difficult to do.

What we are talking about is beyond just monopoly over your own creative work (which 99% of the time is just abused by non-artists to snuff out fair competition), but literally denying your customers your end of the agreement.
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Well, it is a problem that people are choosing to just not buy a thing, whatever reason they have. If nobody was paying, nobody would make anything. That is the logical conclusion of it.

DRMs like this however, are certainly not a solution, especially when those who don't pay a cent, get measurably better and simpler experience. I imagine practices like this, are a net negative on sales, not a positive.
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K3Nv4 said:
I'm not against piracy here just stating common sense lol. Most corperations do put money they make into better content for future games so they can buy more assets and higher more devs. That's how the world has always worked and prospered. You can't just have a home for free without rightful papers stating you purchased it.
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Nobody contested that. Point is simply mislabeling to make pirating worse in the eyes of common folk, than it actually is.

No different from the moral outrage about violence in video games all those years ago on that front, where religious zealots were trying to make people believe, if your children played Mortal Kombat, that they would turn into violent criminals.
 
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